Public Safety negatively impacted by sprawl in Jax

[thelakelander]

This is one of those negative side effects and taxpayer subsidized costs we conveniently overlook when pushing for expensive road projects like SR 9B and the Outer Beltway.

Emergency response time: Slowed by growth, budget constraints in Jacksonville

Kenneth Stagni is grateful for the efforts that the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department expended trying to douse the fire at his house. Firefighters couldn't save the structure or the six cats inside, but they overcame strong winds to keep the flames from spreading to his next-door neighbors' homes.

Still, he sometimes wonders why they weren't there sooner. Some of the photographs that appeared in media reports at the time showed a giant lick of flames and smoke pouring from his roof - and not a firefighter or piece of fire equipment in sight.

"It often crossed my mind - how did they get those pictures of the house fully engulfed before the fire department got there?" Stagni asked the other day.

According to the fire department's records, it took 14 minutes for the first crew to arrive at Stagni's house. That's five minutes longer than the goal set by fire officials for so-called "rural" communities like his.

Ask anyone who follows the fire department in Jacksonville why times are getting worse and they'll tell you it's because of population growth, particularly at the city's fringes. More people means more traffic to contend with and more demand for emergency services.

There's little disagreement about what needs to be done to improve response times and even less about why it can't be done anytime soon.

THE REALITY

The city needs more - more stations, more fire engines, more rescue vehicles, more staffing. A plan approved by the City Council in late 2008 says as much. The Fire Study Report called for nothing less than the largest expansion in the department's 120-year history, suggesting nearly $70 million in capital spending over 10 years.

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-03-27/story/emergency-response-time-slowed-growth-budget-constraints-jacksonville#ixzz1HnUEffBW

[Dog Walker]

Lake, this was exactly my first thought when I read the story too.  Notice that he story itself missed the point entirely.

Next time someone tells you that sprawl development pays for itself, rub this story in their nose.

And don't forget, all of the firefighters will have to have pensions too!   

[brainstormer]

Personally, I don't want to hear the residents who have bought homes in these areas complain.  Why?  These are the same folks who scream that their taxes are too high and the same ones who voted for Hogan.  Look at the results maps and you will see Hogan carried all of the suburban districts and hardly any of the more urban neighborhoods.  The hypocrisy is unbelievable.  They want everything, but want to pay for nothing.  You can't vote for Hogan and then complain about long emergency response plans.  Typical Tea Party nonsense.

If the city planning commission wasn't bought and paid for by developers, fire stations and schools could be mandatory requirements for subdivisions of a certain size.  If they had to built and paid for by the developers, perhaps we wouldn't see as many cookie cutter subdivisions.  At least the ones that were built would have some of the necessary components for a safe neighborhood.  Maybe then rebuilding neighborhoods that already exist would be a better investment.

[thelakelander]

Lake, this was exactly my first thought when I read the story too.  Notice that he story itself missed the point entirely.

Next time someone tells you that sprawl development pays for itself, rub this story in their nose.

And don't forget, all of the firefighters will have to have pensions too!   

It's ironic how all of these things are related.  It's also pretty bad no one has realized this during the mayoral race so far.  As long as our development patterns remain the same, our budget situation will get worse, due to the continued spreading out of our limited financial resources.

[peestandingup]

Lake, this was exactly my first thought when I read the story too.  Notice that he story itself missed the point entirely.

Next time someone tells you that sprawl development pays for itself, rub this story in their nose.

And don't forget, all of the firefighters will have to have pensions too!   

It's ironic how all of these things are related.  It's also pretty bad no one has realized this during the mayoral race so far.  As long as our development patterns remain the same, our budget situation will get worse, due to the continued spreading out of our limited financial resources.

True. This effects so many things. The scary part is most people don't even think about it & realize what the root cause is. Even if they did, it prob wouldn't matter. It's like, you can have their sprawled out sub-division living/suburban-driving gluttonous lifestyle when you pry it from their cold dead hands. Plus, the industry is setup already to keep the status quo. We've kinda screwed ourselves because the more we build out, the harder it gets to manage. And unless you just start demolishing a bunch of sub-divisions or abandoning, you really can't go back.

I've said this a lot on here. One of the main reasons I'm so adamant about it is because I'm currently in this type of situation. Having lived in the heart of a thriving city that's walkable/has awesome public transit (DC), then directly moving out to a suburban neighborhood in the most sprawled out city in the US, kinda gives you a lot of perspective. This is a crazy, wasteful way to live. And its not even cheap either, so I don't understand the attraction to it. Maybe it used to be??

The problem really began when the city of Jacksonville decided somewhere along the way that it wanted to be perceived bigger than what it really is. Meaning gobbling up & incorporating as much areas as possible. Our city limits are simply ridiculous. I mean, freakin' Baldwin to the west is technically a part of the "city of Jacksonville" for Christ sake. What purpose does that even serve?? The more land your city gobbles up, the harder & harder its going to be to manage all of this for transit & other issues. And it certainly has played a role in the decay of downtown. I think what we're really guilty of is having too much land at our disposal & not enough sense to leave it the hell alone. Especially when we had all of this great urban infrastructure already in place.

So I really don't know an answer to this. But in my experience, the smaller & more condensed your city stays, the better it is for urban growth because it sorta forces people to work with what they have. Most all of the great walkable, urban cities in the US have stayed relatively condensed. We don't have that here & I don't know if we ever will. The damage is done & they're still going strong, until what we're basically left with now is just a collection of suburbs & sub-divisions lumped together & calling themselves "a city".

And this isn't even talking about health. You guys ran a great article on the subject that I feel got somewhat overlooked: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2010-jan-the-impact-of-the-built-environment-on-health

[thelakelander]

^Great point about health.  As for Jax, our pattern can't last forever.  We keep it up and we'll eventually join the list of municipalities filing for bankruptcy.

[spuwho]

I read the same story and after looking at the support map, my first thought was that JFRD is over allocated in certain places.

It's easy to rip sprawl as a cause, but no one mentions that perhaps there are too many stations near the core. All would admit that the core does not house what it used to.

How many "legacy" stations still exist where they perform a duplicate function easily handled by another?

What impact does the union have on the ability of COJ to move or close duplicate stations?

Do we still need a station built in 1926 in an area that was once dense in housing, but is no longer? Can we consolidate redundant stations or redeploy them and still meet the desired SLA?

[thelakelander]

Good point.  However, there is a significant amount of more building stock in the urban core, most of the suburban locations on that map are still fairly undeveloped and you'll still need money to build new stations.

However, if the city's new goal is to encourage higher density and redevelopment where infrastructure already exists, is it smart to rid yourself of functional facilities to support a future growth pattern that we claim we want to move away from?

Btw, how do you like the new miniature paper size?  The budget must be getting pretty tight over there at the TU.

[spuwho]

Btw, how do you like the new miniature paper size?  The budget must be getting pretty tight over there at the TU.

It's OK with me. My spouse dislikes it, mostly around the new fonts.

Oddly the obits have changed with larger photos in the narrow format.

It's seems odd to me to read news in the T-U that I picked up on Google News the day prior. With so many ads for hearing aids and more wire stories than local, even we are beginning to question it's subscription value. With the NYT going to paid online now, I suspect others are not far behind.

[mtraininjax]

These are the same folks who scream that their taxes are too high and the same ones who voted for Hogan.

LOL, they also voted for Moran, so where is the logic?